'Halo' Star Joseph Morgan Discusses Embodying a Video Game Villain in Sophomore Season
Halo has become one of, if not the most prevalent show that Paramount + has to offer. It’s one of those big-budget, prime experiences in the television landscape, boasting a massive budget, talented cast, and the name of a franchise that holds and has held a primary stake in the video game industry for two decades and counting. The first game hit Xbox back in the year 2001, and has only been trending up since.
The series’ second season, which just aired its eighth and final episode, adapted perhaps the most notorious release in the legendary lineup of games to this point, Halo: Reach. The game has been cemented as one of the most tragically compelling stories the art has ever seen and, after a first season ripe with exposition and set-up, this one was primed to deliver, and deliver it did.
The second season has seen an uptick in positive reception and coverage, with many critics going as far as to proclaim the show’s redemption in its adaptation of such a storied title. Naturally, fans are beginning to look forward to a potential third season, but before we get there, we can look back on all that the second season did right. At the forefront of that success is the inclusion of one of the game’s antagonistic figures, James Ackerson, played to perfection by Joseph Morgan.
Morgan is a longtime fan of the franchise, playing the games as a child and now helping bring them to life in the show: “As a fellow fan of the games, I’m thrilled to be a part of it. I played them growing up, co-op through the campaigns, I loved them… it was really quite exciting for me to be a part of the show and step onto those sets that I’d only seen in 2-D on a little screen with a controller in my hand. I played Halo: Reach right before I shot the show just to put myself back in that world, and I read The Fall of Reach, the graphic novel, and really got my head back in that space.”
In the games, Ackerson is a colonel in the UNSC (United Nations Security Council) army during the war between the humans and the Covenant, the latter being the alien antagonists featured heavily in the show. He’s known to be ruthless and ambitious, spearheading the “Spartan-III” program and clashing with fan-favorite Dr. Catherine Halsey. Morgan portrays these qualities with ease, selling the character’s complexity through storied glares and unassuming smirks.
He says of the character: “I think Ackerson just believes that he is smarter than everybody in the room, so he is always looking for opportunities to manipulate. He’ll try and stay one step ahead of people, he’ll be your best friend one minute and your worst enemy the next minute. He’s looking for those chinks in your armor.
More often than not, Ackerson is face to face with the series’ hero John-117, the Master Chief himself, played by Pablo Schrieber. Despite Chief’s dominant presence, Ackerson still manages to get the best of him and others like him. “That’s why he’s able to shut John down, and to stand up to a multitude of different characters, like Halsey. He’s always looking to catch people off-guard. You feel like you know what’s going on, and then he’ll take the conversation in a different way. You feel uneasy around him and you’re looking for a life raft to grab onto, and he presents that.
On those one-on-one scenes with Pablo, where the two actors are at one another’s throats for extended lengths of time, Morgan remarks: “He’s a great actor, and incredibly giving as well. As someone who is established as he is, and the lead of a show like that, he was, from day one, very accommodating. In terms of when he was off-camera as well, being there for me. He’s all about the craft, and making the show better. That was great for me, because that’s what I want to do as well. I want to make the best show possible and play the best scenes possible. It was a gift.”
Morgan and Schrieber make for one of the most interesting dyads in recent television history, constantly going back and forth in bouts of mental warfare that bring out the best in the show, and especially the dialogue.
When asked about what it’s like to go from playing the good guys in the game to literally embodying a villain in the show, he said, with a grin, that it’s all about his mindset: “You just have to believe you’re the good guy. I just had to believe that Ackerson was humanity’s only chance at survival, and he was doing what he needed to do. Questionable things, but for the greater good of mankind. He couldn’t explain these things to other people, but they just had to get on board and if they did everything would be okay. When I took that point of view, it was easy.”
Of all his memories shooting the show, Morgan recalls a scene from the third episode as his favorite among them: “There’s a scene with James Ackerson Sr., Ackerson's dad, and he’s struggling with dementia. Ackerson is caring for him, knowing that he’ll have to leave him on Reach… to die. It was an incredibly emotional scene for me. I worked with Bill Patterson, who’s just such a terrific actor, and I felt like that scene was Ackerson at his most vulnerable. It really showed this person caring for someone and having to give that up, which was heartbreaking. I feel like that was as close to the real Ackerson as you could get.”
With all eight episodes of the second season, featuring Morgan’s incredible performance as Ackerson, now streaming, you’d be remiss not to check them out. Halo is some of the best sci-fi television around right now, and if the last few episodes are any indication, Ackerson isn’t going anywhere.